Full Coverage: Northern Europe

30.12.2005 The Women in IT(WINIT) team is organising a one day one day international and interdisciplinary conference to discuss the under-representation of women in ICT workplaces at the University of Salford, UK on 21st March, 2006.

30.12.2005 from Peter Armstrong's blog:
The day arrives... After all the weeks of preparation, Dean from ICE Energy arrived this morning for the commissioning of the heat pump system.

The sequence was: check all the plumbing and electrics and then add glycol to both the ground loops. But will it work?

29.12.2005 Sir Bob Geldof was making an "error of judgment" in associating with the Tories, said Gill Hubbard, a spokeswoman for G8 Alternatives.

29.12.2005 Bob Geldof is to work with the Conservative Party's new policy group on Globalisation and Global Poverty.
* Geldof's year

27.12.2005 Bargehouse Gallery at London's Oxo Tower House is currently hosting two exhibitions - Impunity, on the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and in Guatemala City; and Picture This: Your war is not with me, paintings by Damien Hirst, Sam Taylor Wood, John Leach and others, with all works for sale in aid of the charity War Child.

26.12.2005 “Beyond the River – Sharing Benefits and Responsibilities” is the theme of the 2006 World Water Week in Stockholm, which takes place August 20-26, 2006, and will address livelihood improvement, land-based activities within a river basin, and society’s ability to cope with natural disasters, among other aspects.

26.12.2005 First Amazon, then Google, and now a number of other players have launched initiatives to digitise print publications for Web indexing (and, in some cases, potential future sales models). While publishers have welcomed the added visibility which search-engine indexing brings, they have been concerned both at those initiatives which do not involve seeking rightsholder permission to digitise in-copyright works, and at the implications of third-party sales of all or part of their works.

23.12.2005 The UK is to spend £3.5 million over three years researching "clean coal" technologies with China with the aim of developing power stations that emit less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

23.12.2005 Some of the proposed changes to Scottish planning law could be a planning disaster for many communities, warns a leading environmental group.

22.12.2005 Britain is to cut £15 million in direct assistance to Uganda as a result of concerns about democracy ahead of the February general election.

21.12.2005 Asda, the UK’s second biggest supermarket, has announced its participation in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. The meetings will attempt to promote a sustainable solution for palm oil, the sourcing of which currently contributes to deforestation in some of the world’s most sensitive regions.

21.12.2005 The Home Office has admitted it was searching for an Iraqi Kurd who had been unlawfully deported to Iraq.

20.12.2005 Innovative projects that drive forward e-planning services that benefit local authorities businesses and individuals will receive a £500,000 boost, e-Govt Minister Jim Fitzpatrick announced today.

18.12.2005 From Peter Armstrong's blog:
At last we are underway with our heat pump system. The instruction manual says: dig trench, lay pipe, pressure test and backfill. But it ain't that easy. We've got excellent JCB drivers, Diddy and Richard, working with our long-time builder, John. We plan a route across the lawn and through the wood that gives us the necessary 400 metres of trench.

We've decided to cut a nine inch trench for each pipe, rather than a 1 metre trench for a pair, because of the amount of extra digging. It starts well, but we immediately hit problems.

17.12.2005 For my upcoming flight to Nairobi and Lusaka, Key Travel report that I will be producing 4 tons of CO2. To offset this I’m offered options for planting trees in Mexico or Uganda. I’ve chosen the Bushenyi District in Uganda where they say they are planting of mixed native woodlot for timber, including mahogany, cedar, African cherry, laurel, and silk trees, with boundary planting for fuel wood and fruit. My offset costs £16.43.

17.12.2005 From Mark Porthouse's blog:
Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) are earnt by green/renewable energy suppliers for the energy they create from hydro, wind, tidal energy sources.

So, simply put, if you buy one ROC (and do not sell it on) then you are forcing the energy market to produce a certain amount of energy from renewable sources. In fact one ROC is given for every megawatthour (mWh - 1,000kWh) of electricity generated from renewable sources. It is perhaps typical for a family home to use around 5mWh of electricity per year.

17.12.2005 Detailed pictures of photovoltaic arrays installed on the roof of St James Church, Piccadilly, London in November 2005.

The 44-panel PV system is estimated to generate 4,100 KW hours p.a. and save about 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

17.12.2005 From Andii Bowsher's blog:
Looks like a dream come true for run-around purposes. Less good for taking the family on holiday, but that's not so frequent.Got to remember that the average journey in the UK is 8 miles and one person is usually in the vehicle ... electric car with a minute TCO.

GoinGreen :: G-wiz :: Automatic Electric Vehicle

17.12.2005 From TreeHugger:
The Guardian asked ad agencies to spread the message of global warming out to the populace at large, instead of ‘buy more, buy more’. From Soul, an advert “inspired by the government's chief scientist Professor Sir David King's claim that the threat to the planet from global warming is greater than that posed by terrorism.”

17.12.2005 Alternative Energy Blog:
A miniature urban wind farm is being built on top of a 13-storey building in Manchester city centre using micro wind turbines.

The 24 turbines, which will stand 3m tall, will be erected on top of the CIS building on Portland Street. The turbines will produce 56,000 units of renewable energy each year, enough electricity to service about 5% of the energy needs of the building.